Thanks for the info. I'll take a look at adding the delay command into the mencode options. I knew there had to be a flag like that.

As for the Quicktime MPEG-2 component, I've never had a problem playing any HD or SD files with it that have been decoded first. You have to obviously put them through TivoDecode but after that, they work fine.

Thanks for the info. I'll take a look at adding the delay command into the mencode options. I knew there had to be a flag like that.

As for the Quicktime MPEG-2 component, I've never had a problem playing any HD or SD files with it that have been decoded first. You have to obviously put them through TivoDecode but after that, they work fine.

Ok, I'll add that to the FAQ then
Thanks!

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See, I thought the same, and have been able to play TiVo MPEG-2 files in the past (I have the $20 Apple MPEG-2 plugin.) Haven't tried it in awhile but I do recall it working.

So I was dismayed when I read above that you decided to remove Mpeg-2 native format several versions ago.

That said, it'd be great to see it back... and hey, how about letting us know your PayPal address so we can thank you for your hard work. I, for one, would be happy to contribute to the fund that buys you the plug-in (and more. )

So I was dismayed when I read above that you decided to remove Mpeg-2 native format several versions ago.

That said, it'd be great to see it back... and hey, how about letting us know your PayPal address so we can thank you for your hard work. I, for one, would be happy to contribute to the fund that buys you the plug-in (and more. )

Actually I never removed it. I renamed "mpeg-2 native" to "decrypt". That stopped a barrage of people who were upset that their quicktime player, that can clearly play mpeg-2's.. was claiming it wasn't a valid movie.

So yeah. it's still there... It's called 'decrypt' (which is just-as-valid a description, but stops the complaints). There are also additional mpeg-2 formats which are actual conversions, which work even if you don't have the quicktime mpeg-2 component. (I'm trying to keep everything here 'free'.. Otherwise, why not just buy Toast?).

As for paypal. If you really have a need to donate, then pick a charity. Donate what you'd give me instead? I appreciate the sentiment.. feel free to tell others about the code if you like it instead?... Or just continue helping me identify/fix bugs.

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Just a side note about the mpeg-2 playback component. I haven't been able to get anything off the Tivo to play audio in Quicktime even with the component installed. mpeg-2's that I create (kids movies etc..) for playback on the Tivo DO play in Quicktime, but for all native Tivo downloads, I have to use VLC. At first I thought it was AC3 files, but I just tested with some SD videos and the audio doesn't work at all. It may be user error, but the mpeg-2 component doesn't work for me.

Just a side note about the mpeg-2 playback component. I haven't been able to get anything off the Tivo to play audio in Quicktime even with the component installed. mpeg-2's that I create (kids movies etc..) for playback on the Tivo DO play in Quicktime, but for all native Tivo downloads, I have to use VLC. At first I thought it was AC3 files, but I just tested with some SD videos and the audio doesn't work at all. It may be user error, but the mpeg-2 component doesn't work for me.

Hmm since I don't have the component, anyone else with it care to chime in? (I'd hate to recommend a solution in the faq that costs money, only to then have people tell me it doesn't actually work)...

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You know, you are right. I forgot about the audio issue. I've been able to make things play on occasion but I just tried with a video and got no audio. It's odd why it does this with the Tivo mpegs because I've got nearly a Terabyte of MPEG-2s pulled from my ReplayTVs and those play fine (and Replay used a funky MPEG2 variant as it was).

Ok, just to be safe removing that suggestion from the FAQ then. If there is a workaround, tell me

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The series-3 tends to just store the broadcast atsc video in the
mpeg-2 as it was sent. series-2 (and series-3 for non-digital channels)
will re-encode it. I think the directtv models stored the digital bits that
were being broadcast as-si.

So it's possible the component works fine for encodings done one way
but not the other..

Either way, it's not something I'm going to recommend people use .

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I guess if it's a fixed 250ms, you can go into advanced, and add '-delay .25' to the list of options, and see if that helps any. Unfortunately, if the delay varies (and it usually will across a commercial cut) I don't think there's anything that can be done...

Just wanted to let you know that this worked perfectly. The delay is consistent throughout the shows and adding in that 250 msec delay did the trick. I'm not sure if it's exactly right as far as the time, but it's close enough and the lips pretty much match up with the voice.

I've tried twice now to pull a show off of my Tivo and burn it to DVD and both times the program has stopped extracting the show less than half way into the process (the show is about 4 1/2 hours long but it only extracted about 1 1/2 hours of it). Any idea why this is happening?

where are you extracting to? Is it possible that the location is getting full? What format and options are you using? It might help to turn on logging (under Prefs.. Advanced) and then attaching the log (it's normally under /tmp/iTiVo-<username>/iTiVo.log).

Also, please make sure that you have no other tool on any other computer trying to download from that tivo (the tivo will only let one person do a download at a time...). -- a common quiet culprit is the 'now playing' widget which most people forget they ever installed...

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1) Don't automatically connect to the Tivo upon launch (or better: give us a preference not to). I have multiple Tivos and frequently don't want to connect to the last one I did. I have to wait for it to download the show list before switching to the one I want.

2) Add a "YouTube HD" format profile for 1280x720 h.264 video.

3) Fix your AppleScript bug in preferences. Everytime I go into preferences and hit Cancel I get the error and then can't get into prefs again until I relaunch. This seems so blatant I'm wondering whether only I'm hitting this error. Let me know if you need more info from me.

4) There is no 4. I only have 3 requests right now. Love the app! Thank you, thank you for creating it!

where are you extracting to? Is it possible that the location is getting full? What format and options are you using? It might help to turn on logging (under Prefs.. Advanced) and then attaching the log (it's normally under /tmp/iTiVo-<username>/iTiVo.log).

Also, please make sure that you have no other tool on any other computer trying to download from that tivo (the tivo will only let one person do a download at a time...). -- a common quiet culprit is the 'now playing' widget which most people forget they ever installed...

Yeah - I should have been more clear about that. I'm extracting the show from my Tivo to my computer using the DVD option under format. I'm going to turn on logging, try it again and attach the log.

Yeah - I should have been more clear about that. I'm extracting the show from my Tivo to my computer using the DVD option under format. I'm going to turn on logging, try it again and attach the log.

Ahh, well, I *should* bring up the fact that there's a small bug in the DVD format (it shouldn't have caused a crash, but it does sometimes create unreadable files). I have a fix for it, but it's slated for the next beta...
Until then, if you need to use the 'DVD' format, after selecting it, go to the Advanced tab, and where you see 'encoder video options' delete ALL of that, and replace it with

(you will need to repeat this whenever you choose another format and then go back to the DVD format.).. Sorry

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1) Don't automatically connect to the Tivo upon launch (or better: give us a preference not to). I have multiple Tivos and frequently don't want to connect to the last one I did. I have to wait for it to download the show list before switching to the one I want.

Ok, adding a preferences option to control this.

Quote:

2) Add a "YouTube HD" format profile for 1280x720 h.264 video.

youtube accepts 1280x720? can I get more details on the requirements? (bitrate? audio format/bitrate? container?)

Quote:

3) Fix your AppleScript bug in preferences. Everytime I go into preferences and hit Cancel I get the error and then can't get into prefs again until I relaunch. This seems so blatant I'm wondering whether only I'm hitting this error. Let me know if you need more info from me.

Ermm.. that's a bug. And no, it doesn't happen for me when I hit cancel. Does the error say anything useful? (yes, iTiVo is un ugly-ass applescript program).

Quote:

4) There is no 4. I only have 3 requests right now. Love the app! Thank you, thank you for creating it!

Well hurry up and find a 4... you're leaving me hanging here!!!

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One thing I forgot to mention is that when using the feature to cut commercials, it would be nice if the first couple minutes gets no cutting. This is because some shows that are syndicated like on A&E or Bravo get started while the previous show is ending (annoying yes but it's the way it is). I think the com skip feature thinks this is a commercial. At least it does it with Law and Order as it starts out with a black screen (heck, L&O has ALWAYS played havoc with my ReplayTV automatic commercial advance so perhaps it's just the way L&O is). But I'm seeing some of my L&O episodes start basically after the opening credits/title sequence of the show.

Would be nice to just be able to accept commercials w/in the first couple minutes...

One thing I forgot to mention is that when using the feature to cut commercials, it would be nice if the first couple minutes gets no cutting. This is because some shows that are syndicated like on A&E or Bravo get started while the previous show is ending (annoying yes but it's the way it is). I think the com skip feature thinks this is a commercial. At least it does it with Law and Order as it starts out with a black screen (heck, L&O has ALWAYS played havoc with my ReplayTV automatic commercial advance so perhaps it's just the way L&O is). But I'm seeing some of my L&O episodes start basically after the opening credits/title sequence of the show.

Would be nice to just be able to accept commercials w/in the first couple minutes...

I'm worried about getting into 'refined control of comskip behavior'. While it is possible to have some control over comskip (and in fact, how it determines what should be cut out), attempting to give user control over this is entering into 'scary territory' for me. If you feel brave, the comskip.ini file is in /Applications/iTiVo.app/Contents/Resources/comskip.ini
and instructions on many of the values in there can be found at http://www.kaashoek.com/files/tuning.htm
(be sure to save your changes somewhere, as new releases of iTiVo will probably overwrite that file).

I did initially think about giving users 'some' control over comskip (and in fact, you'll note the entire comskip panel only has one button). But for now, there is just too much black magic going on for me to want to mess with it.

But at least you DO have the option of messing with it Just no getting upset with me if your program is editted incorrectly!!

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It's when I choose preferences from the menu (not the button on the main window), and then hit cancel.

Oh hey, it's breaking here too. (I completely forgot about the menu option). Ok will debug. Thanks!edit: Ok it's fixed... pretty annoying bug. Turns out AppleScript has one global value for a string/token/list delimiter, and you have to override it to split things.. but since it's global, and the prefs window can be opened while other things are going on.. that variable can change... (ech).

Anyways, I at least put in a small workaround for it. I'm sure there's plenty of race conditions that will still break it, but they should be rare enough that I'm not going to worry about it. (Sorry applescript is not my forte.. I just learned it as I was working on iTiVo).

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Anyways, until a future release happens, you can just edit the youtube setting (go to advanced, and under video encoding, where you see dsize=480:320:0, make it dsize=1280:720:0)... I suspect you'll want to up the bitrate to something like 1000, or maybe even more. From a quick reading of that document, it looks like they'll accept ANY bitrate as long as the final file size is smaller than 20G.

You can save that format out as YouTube HD or something...added note: They don't talk about any h.264 settings (like number of b-frames, h.264 level, cabac, etc)..
so I'd assume the youtube setting should work with the two values about modified, but you should tell me if
it doesn't (and if they support better stuff, I can add it in).

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I suspect there was no audio on the decyprt files from HD because those were ac-3 audio files and quicktime probably didn't like that. I'm hoping that this fixes it for that.. but I'm wondering if it still keeps everything working?
(oh, and there might be some audio sync issues.. bah).

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First of all thank you for iTiVo. It is a great program, it does almost everything I want in a reasonable way. I don't want/need much of what Roxio supplies (DVD burning, etc.) but was close to buying it since the earlier, unsupported free tools were a bit clunky. With your updates iTiVo is a nearly perfect match to what I need.

There is one feature I can think of that would be nice to add. Often when I pull shows off the TiVo I end up doing it twice. Once for my iPhone and once for archiving. (I used to archive the MPEG 2 decoded video, I've switched to H.264 to save space.) It would be nice to only do the transfer from the TiVo once and then generate both of the output files from it.

Ahh, well, I *should* bring up the fact that there's a small bug in the DVD format (it shouldn't have caused a crash, but it does sometimes create unreadable files). I have a fix for it, but it's slated for the next beta...
Until then, if you need to use the 'DVD' format, after selecting it, go to the Advanced tab, and where you see 'encoder video options' delete ALL of that, and replace it with

(you will need to repeat this whenever you choose another format and then go back to the DVD format.).. Sorry

I'm having trouble finding the log file (I even used Spotlight to search for it and I still can't find it). I've tried to extract this show to the DVD format several times and it just won't work. I keep getting just under 1 1/2 hours of the show and that's it - it's like iTivo just quits extracting at that point and I don't get any kind of error message.

I'm having trouble finding the log file (I even used Spotlight to search for it and I still can't find it). I've tried to extract this show to the DVD format several times and it just won't work. I keep getting just under 1 1/2 hours of the show and that's it - it's like iTivo just quits extracting at that point and I don't get any kind of error message.

You have to enable logging first (Prefs.. Advanced... "put debugging info in /tmp"

Then you need to browse to /tmp (Open finder, and under the top menu, there will be a "Go. Go to Folder...", and type in /tmp

That's pretty much it.

Still not sure why the transfers are quitting though.. Have you tried a different encode format?

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You have to enable logging first (Prefs.. Advanced... "put debugging info in /tmp"

Then you need to browse to /tmp (Open finder, and under the top menu, there will be a "Go. Go to Folder...", and type in /tmp

That's pretty much it.

Still not sure why the transfers are quitting though.. Have you tried a different encode format?

Ok - I found the log but it's huge (10.2MB). I obviously can't post that here so what should I do? I did extract the show using the Decrypt format successfully but that's a big file (30+GB). I wanted to extract it to something smaller so that I could burn it to DVD.